


Moving Pictures

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 07:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5658115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a case ends in a small town, Mulder and Scully see a movie.  Not canon, but could probably be nestled somewhere in season 7.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Pictures

Scully had just settled down on the bed of her motel room, pillows propped behind her back, legs crossed, paperback in hand, when a soft knock on the door interrupted the first paragraph she scanned. It was so light she almost thought she imagined it. She lowered the book to her lap and cocked her head, listening. Another soft knock followed and Scully got up to check the peephole. She wasn’t surprised to see Mulder fidgeting outside her door when she opened it.

 

“How about a movie?” Mulder asked.

 

Scully swung the motel door open a little wider and stepped back to invite Mulder in. He stayed on the walkway, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. Above him, a yellowing fluorescent light flickered obnoxiously. He squinted up at the light and then moved one arm up to tap the casing on the bulb.

 

“A movie?” Scully asked.

 

“A motion picture. Moving images accompanied by sound.” Mulder spoke to the light, which seemed to steady a little since his interference, but went back to flickering when he shoved his hand back into his pocket.

 

“I know what a movie is, Mulder.”

 

“Well?”

 

“Well, what?”

 

“Nothing left to do here, Scully. There’s a movie theater off the main road and I don’t know about your room, but all I’m getting are thirteen channels of static.”

 

Scully stared at Mulder. He had yet to meet her gaze since she’d opened the door; his attention was on the light until it turned to the ground as he scuffed his foot along a crack in the cement.  Lately, she found Mulder’s behavior odd, even for Mulder. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was wrong, but something was different.

 

“I was going to read…” Scully trailed off. Mulder nodded at the ground. “Mulder?”

 

Mulder brought his eyes up to hers, but didn’t say anything.

 

“Do you even know what they’re playing?” Scully asked.

 

“It’s a documentary. You’ll like it.”

 

“A documentary? In this town?”

 

“Goes by the name of The Birds. Some chap named Hitchcock made it.”

 

Scully raised a brow. “Mulder, you know full well that’s not a documentary.”

 

“Compared to the things we’ve seen, it could be. It might as well be.”

 

Scully lifted her brow even higher, and pulled her mouth tight to disguise the smile tugging at her lips.

 

Mulder rolled back on his heels and dropped his eyes to the ground again. “What do you say, Scully?”

 

“What time is the movie?”

 

******

 

“Take a walk on the wild side, Scully.”

 

Scully glanced up from the single sheet of the laminated menu in her hand. Mulder twisted his wrist to swirl the ice in the glass of water he held. He looked relaxed, leaning back against the red vinyl seat across from her in their booth, one arm outstretched along the back. At any minute, she expected him to kick up his feet and find them next to her on her own side as he stretched out.

 

“What, like order chicken in the salad?” Scully asked.

 

Mulder crunched his ice and picked up the menu in front of him. “I don’t see salad on the menu.” He flipped it over and then back again. “Nope, no salad.”

 

“Yes, that’s the problem.”

 

“Come on, Scully. Let me see you eat a cheeseburger, just once.”

 

Scully screwed up her face in mock disgust. She would let Mulder continue to think she had an issue with a burger because he seemed to find it so amusing that she preferred to eat light when they were out on a case. It was never the burger that was the problem, it was the places Mulder usually took her to, but the diner they were at to kill time before the movie didn’t seem to offer her much choice in the matter. At least the place they were in now seemed respectable enough.

 

When Scully ordered a plain burger along with a strawberry milkshake, Mulder looked genuinely pleased. When Mulder offered to taste the shake just to “make sure it’s quality,” after the waitress brought it to the table, Scully pushed the glass towards him and not the metal container with the overflow that came with it. He used her straw, sighing in appreciation when he pushed the glass back towards her.

 

“You know, Scully, ancient Egyptians started the practice of having taste testers for their meals because poisoning was such a common form of assassination.”

 

“Are you trying to tell me you were making sure I wasn’t poisoned?”

 

“No, I just really like strawberry milkshakes. But, in the name of your safety, want me to test the burger?”

 

Scully smacked Mulder’s hand away from her plate, smiling. “You have your own,” she said. “I’ll take my chances.”

 

They ate slowly. Scully would have to admit that she enjoyed the food. She still would have preferred a nice chicken salad, but the burger was fine. Occasionally she looked out the window, wondering how such a place as quiet and with such little activity could exist. They had been to their share of small towns, but Scully still marveled over them.

 

“Tell me something about you that I don’t know,” Mulder said.   


“I don’t know what you don’t know.”

 

“A lot, I’m sure.”

 

“It doesn’t seem possible, Mulder, that you don’t know something about me.” Scully was surprised by how true it felt after she said it.

 

“I didn’t know you liked to dip your fries in your milkshake.” Mulder gestured to Scully’s hand with one of his own fries before he popped it in his mouth. “Samantha always did that as well.”

 

Scully paused from swirling a fry in the melted remains of her shake. She looked into Mulder’s eyes at the mention of Samantha. The thought of his sister usually brought a distance with it, but his demeanor didn’t change.

 

“Is there something in particular you want to know?” Scully asked.

 

“Harboring any deep, dark secrets?”

 

“Yes, I secretly really do like hamburgers.”

 

“When was your first kiss?”

 

Scully blinked and pulled her head back a little. Her cheeks warmed from slight embarrassment at the question. She wiped her mouth on her napkin and then rubbed her lips together.

 

“I was ten,” Scully said.

 

“Tongue?”

 

“Mulder!”

 

Mulder chuckled and ate another fry. “What was Romeo’s name?”

 

“James.”

 

“How did this kiss come about?”

 

“Someone’s birthday party.”

 

“Seven minutes in heaven?”

 

“Spin the bottle.”

 

“Nervous?”

 

“Petrified.”

 

The smile on Mulder’s face grew wider, his amusement shining from the twinkle in his eyes. His gaze lingered on her face as though he was envisioning her memory in his mind. There was something else there too, something she couldn’t put her finger on, but it made her stomach flutter. She blinked rapidly, almost knocking her milkshake over in her haste to put her suddenly nervous hands on something.

 

“What about you?” Scully asked.

 

“I know you may not believe this, Scully, but I wasn’t always the ladies man you see before you now.” Mulder grinned and waggled his brows at her.

 

Scully didn’t even try to resist the urge to roll her eyes.

 

“Fourteen,” Mulder said. “And she was an older woman.”

 

“How old?”

 

“Seventeen.”

 

“And how did this kiss come about?” Scully asked, her tone lightly mocking Mulder’s earlier question.

 

“Allison. Long blonde hair. Freckles on her shoulders. She was the mother’s helper shuttled up for the summer by the next-door neighbors. She thought the toddler had run off one afternoon, possibly to drown in the ocean. I found him napping under the porch and for one minute, I was a hero. Her hero. The moment I relieved her of her panic she just…”

 

Mulder trailed off, his hands lifted slightly as though he were holding the memory of a face. He lowered his arms and put his elbows on the table. After a few moments he picked up a fry and started jamming it into a smear of ketchup on his plate. For lack of something to say, Scully pushed the rest of her milkshake towards him.

 

“You want the rest of this?” Scully asked.

 

Mulder pulled the glass in and stared at it. Scully watched him play with the straw for a few moments before he drew it into his mouth and took a slow sip of the remaining shake. His demeanor seemed to change again, back to the shy, almost sad state he was in when he showed up at her motel door.

 

“You know what I like about movies, Scully?”

 

“The ones in the drawer that don’t belong to you? Or are we talking about documentaries?”

 

Mulder looked up and Scully gave him a smile. He smiled back and then toyed with the straw some more.

 

“You only get a fraction of a story out of a photograph,” Mulder said. “What was the person thinking? What had just happened before they snapped that picture? What happened just after? You can’t really know for sure. Sometimes it’s even hard to look at a photo you’re in and to know exactly, precisely, what happened in that moment. It’s frozen. Locked.   Good, bad, or indifferent.”

 

“And movies aren’t like that?”

 

“Moving images have more life. Instead of one frame, you have thousands. Put them together and a story unfolds before your eyes. You don’t have to wonder.”

 

“That’s not true.”

 

“No?”

 

“Subtext.”

 

“Ah.” Mulder nodded and licked a drip of milkshake from his knuckle.

 

“I should think you’d like trying to fill in those gaps,” she said.

 

“I feel like I fill in the gaps on a daily basis.” He shrugged. “But, I have had moments where I’ll admit I’d like to press pause in life, maybe freeze the frame, just to have a record of it somewhere other than my memory. If it’s only here,” Mulder paused, tapping his finger against his temple. “If no one else can see it, does it exist?”

 

There was an extended silence that followed. Scully sat up and reached over the table to drag her shake back from Mulder. He let it go without looking at her. She sucked the remaining inch of milkshake through the straw, contemplative, while he studied the smeared water ring the glass left behind.

 

“I’ve thought of something you don’t know, Mulder,” she said.

 

“Oh?” Mulder looked up and there was immediate curiosity in his eyes, much to Scully’s relief.

 

“The most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me is my bikini top coming off on a waterslide when I was thirteen and we were on a summer vacation.”

 

“Scully…” Mulder leaned forward and reached across the table, putting his hand over hers. He rubbed her thumb and stared into her eyes and she was shocked that no snide remarks or innuendo followed her small confession.

 

“Bet you’d like to add that to your freeze frames,” Scully quipped. Mulder shook his head and she opened her mouth, but then closed it almost immediately, at a loss for words.

 

Their waitress interrupted the moment to place their check on the table. Mulder grabbed for it with his free hand, still rubbing Scully’s thumb with his own. “Thank you for telling me that,” he said, leaning slightly to the side to grab his wallet in his back pocket.

 

“You’re welcome,” Scully murmured, still waiting for a sarcastic remark that never came.

 

*****

 

Scully breathed out of her mouth with purpose, watching the short puff of air become a small foggy cloud in front of her face. The temperature had dropped since they’d come out of movie, but it didn’t feel that cold to her, certainly not cold enough to see her breath.

 

Mulder walked beside her. She could hear the gravel crunch under their feet with every step. His shoes made a distinctly softer sound than her boots. After they turned off the main street, the short road to the motel was poorly lit and it was paved with a combination of equal parts dirt, grass and gravel.

 

Scully nearly jumped when she felt Mulder’s hand slip into hers. She had to fight not to stop in her tracks from surprise. He kept the same pace as though he took her hand every day, like there was nothing unusual in any way about it.

 

“Did you like the movie?” Mulder asked.

 

The casual tone was Scully’s undoing. It was the final straw for her and finally she stopped, giving his arm a small jerk in the process. He turned back to her, but didn’t let go of her hand.

 

“What’s wrong?” Scully asked.

 

“What do you mean?” Mulder tilted his head a little to the side, his face a mask of innocence. He looked genuinely confused.

 

“You just…” Scully paused at the look in Mulder’s eyes. There was something there akin to fear, but not quite, and she didn’t think it would do well to press it. “Yes, I liked the movie.”

 

Mulder nodded and then he turned away from her and looked up at the sky. “If we look back on the past when we look at the stars, do you think the stars are looking at us a thousand years in the future?”

 

Scully looked up at the stars, always more prominent in the Midwest than what she was accustomed to at home. Her mind instantly pulled at the scientific facts she knew about space and time and she cursed Mulder for being able to manipulate a conversation so easily. She knew he was trying to distract her and she knew _he_ knew it would work.

 

“Assuming that stars could see,” Scully answered. “And assuming that people were made of flaming balls of hydrogen, I would have to say they would share an equal view of us as we do of them.”

 

“Wouldn’t it be interesting to view the universe from the stars perspective?”

 

Scully startled with a shiver and Mulder turned to her. She pulled her hand from his and crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling the coldness in the air. He immediately shucked his leather jacket and pulled it over her shoulders, holding it closed over her arms.

 

“I’m fine,” Scully protested.

 

“I know.” Mulder smiled a little and took a step back. “You always are.” His face went up to the sky again and Scully recalled a mission control room at NASA and an Apollo 11 keychain.

 

“Do you think if things had been different, you would have ended up in space?” Scully asked.

 

Mulder shook his head and looked down at her. “I can’t really see myself as an astronaut, can you?”

 

“Maybe not an astronaut, but I can see you on the ground, fully in charge of ensuring that the ones who are going up get there safely.”

 

Mulder touched the zipper pull at the end of his jacket hanging loosely over her shoulders and gave it a tug. “What kind of doctor would you have been if things had been different for you?”

 

“I really don’t know.”

 

“Brain surgeon?”

 

“Not likely.” Scully chuckled softly.

 

“The real question is, do you think that Dr. Scully and cosmonaut Mulder would have met?”

 

“If cosmonaut Mulder was as accident prone as special agent Mulder, maybe he would’ve ended up in her ER.”

 

“So you’re an attending physician then?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“If they had met, even under those circumstances, would Dr. Scully have said yes if cosmonaut Mulder asked her on a dinner and a movie date?”

 

Scully raised her brow. Her mouth opened and she shook her head, trying to think of an answer, but she was caught off guard.

 

“You’re probably right,” Mulder said, looking back up at the sky.

 

“I didn’t even answer the question.”

 

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

 

Mulder turned towards the motel and began walking. Scully went after him, one hand shooting out from the flaps of the jacket over her shoulders to grasp his elbow, stopping him with a tight grip. He looked down at her in surprise and cocked his head. She shook her head again, not sure of what to say.

 

“What?” he asked.

 

“I don’t want to be other people,” she said.

 

“It was hypothetical.”

 

“Hypothetically, I don’t want to be other people.”

 

“Fine, Scully.”

 

“Mulder…”

 

Mulder sighed and tilted his head back as he shoved his hands inside his pockets. Scully acted on impulse and stepped into his space, toe to toe with him, and then rested her forehead against his chest. She slipped her arms around his waist and up along his back, curving her fingers over the back of his shoulders. Hesitantly, he put his hands on her hips.

 

“Ask me,” she said.

 

“I don’t think I can,” he answered.

 

She closed her eyes. “And I don’t think I can say it unless you ask me.”

 

“Will…Scully would you….”

 

“Yeah,” she whispered.

 

Mulder’s hand came up and his fingers slipped through her hair. “Let’s go inside,” he said.

 

*****

 

“I thought of something else,” Scully whispered into the dark.

 

Next to her, Mulder rolled over and propped himself up on his elbow. He traced indistinguishable shapes on her naked back with his index finger until she squirmed and turned over, which just gave him the excuse to run his hand over her stomach, inching higher to lightly cup one of her breasts. She felt hypnotized and drowsy by the soft touches and she closed her eyes, sighing.

 

“What did you think of?” he asked.

 

“My favorite color is blue,” she murmured, barely moving her lips as she leaned into his caresses. “My favorite time of day is sunrise. My favorite season is the fall. I have a scar just below my left knee from when I fell off a bike when I was eight.”

 

Mulder swept his hand down, pushing his fingers under the covers and moving down her thigh to feel her kneecap. He circled the marbled-textured line of scar tissue with the pad of his index finger. She trapped his hand to her knee by sliding her thighs together and turned into him. “Mulder?” she whispered, and he leaned down and hummed against her neck in reply. “How long have you wanted to ask me?”

 

“Long enough that I don’t remember. How long would you have said yes?”

 

“Long enough that I don’t remember either.”

 

Mulder stretched out on the bed and she moved with him to lie against his side, breasts pressed against the soft skin of his chest and her head on his shoulder. He kicked the sheets up and they fluttered down messily at their hips and she stopped him from pulling them up further. She was warm enough from his body heat, even warmer when he wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close. She closed her eyes and nuzzled her face into his neck.

 

Scully wondered what the picture of them would look like in that moment and if anyone could tell what they’d been through to get there. Not in a million years would anyone know just by a single frame. Sex. Post-coital haze. One night stand? New love?  Old love? Both... Surface answers signifying nothing. They’d have to put all the pictures together of all the moments, string them together into moving images to grasp the enormity of their story. Mulder was right, sometimes a snapshot gave away nothing, but it existed and it would have to be enough.

 

The End


End file.
